Which is a totally irrelevant analogy. What might have
limited a phone’s UI had quite a lot more to do with actual hardware
limitations.

What "actual hardware limitations"? There are letters on a U.S. phone dial and have been nearly forever. The bad UI was imposed to keep costs down and monopoly profits up.

What limits programmers from decent UI development is not the
technology. Excuses, sure, much like the notion of ‘data driven’.

True. First of all, programmers only do UI because no one will pay for properly trained designers to do it. And that, too, is a matter of keeping costs down and profits up. If people wouldn't use bad UIs, the products wouldn't sell, but they *do* sell, so why shouldn't companies take advantage of that?